


till tomorrow

by sparkling_cider



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, World War II, although like it’s pretty gay ngl, i just realized this doesn’t actually read like slash, i mean i think of them as being together but there’s nothing explicitly romantic happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 03:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17859491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkling_cider/pseuds/sparkling_cider
Summary: Steve is totally fine with dying (kind of). Bucky is decidedly not.





	till tomorrow

“You have to stop pulling these stunts,” Bucky says. They’ve just come back from a mission, and they’re sitting side by side on Steve’s cot in Steve’s tent (which he gets all to himself because he’s an officer). “Someday Dugan won’t have a flamethrower, and then what?”

“Please,” Steve replies, joking. “Dum Dum always has a flamethrower.”

“I’m serious,” Bucky says. Voice level because he’s too tired to yell. “Rogers, you’re strong but you’re not invincible.”

“Haven’t died yet, have I?”

He still thinks Bucky’s kidding.

“Steve, look at me.” He does, and Bucky forces himself to meet his gaze. “The kinds of things you’re doing? Taking on a dozen Hydra agents by yourself, jumping onto bombs and hoping they won’t blow? Give it another week or two, your luck will run out.” There’s a lump in Bucky’s throat. He ignores it. “You can’t keep going like this. You can’t do that to me.”

They stare at each other, Bucky too exposed enough to feel awkward about his vulnerability. Is this what it feels like to be Steve Rogers, he wonders.

“You can’t,” he repeats, more a plea than a statement. And then he looks down, because he’s not actually brave enough to want to see what Steve’s face is doing right now.

A minute pases, then another.

“It’s just,” Steve says finally, “that if I don’t—if I don’t give it everything, this war, then it’ll be like the serum was wasted.”

He glances sideways at Bucky, who doesn’t respond.

“You know I wasn’t supposed to live this long,” Steve says.

_ I know you’re an idiot _ , Bucky thinks but doesn’t say.

“Look at what they did to me,” Steve continues. Gestures at his body. “This isn’t natural. I was made to fight the war, so I’ll fight it to the best of my ability.”

“Is part of your ability not dying?”

Steve shrugs. Bucky regrets being able to read him so well, sometimes, because it means that he can see how faked Steve’s nonchalance is, and that’s a whole other level of hurt. “If fighting the war means dying, then I’ll die. And if not, I won’t.”

He picks at the frayed edges of the bedsheets. “It’s not up to me is what I’m saying. But I’m not—I’m not trying to kill myself. I want to survive, I really do.”

“But you don’t think you’re gonna.”

“Well, statistically—”

Bucky snorts.

“Fine! I don’t, alright, is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to have it confirmed that my best friend’s a suicidal idiot.”

“I just said—”

“I heard you.”

Bucky can feel Steve simmering with frustration beside him, and he feels it replicated in himself, except with less righteousness and more resignation. Hearing Steve say out loud that he’s not just being reckless for the sake of recklessness, that he genuinely believes that he’s worth just as much dead as he is alive? It’s not unexpected, not really, but before, it’d always been an undercurrent, a vague notion that underpinned dumb shit Steve said occasionally, like “Don’t you think you’d be better off if I moved out” or “[angsty thing! god i love angst].”

The fact that Steve feels comfortable saying it aloud at last is terrifying. It can only mean one thing: Steve is sure enough of his impending death that he wants to be sure Bucky understands him before it’s too late. The realization seizes Bucky with a paralyzing fear, a feeling like he’s back on that godawful table, his organs spilling out of him while Zola takes notes. 

But Jesus Christ, what can Bucky do about it? Steve’s pretty damn confident of his messed-up logic. It’s the same logic that made him get into fights on the playground, in bars, and at work; it’s the same logic that prompted him to enlist.

Bucky wants to shake Steve until he understands that he doesn’t have any kind of obligation to die for an army that didn’t want him in the first place, that he’s allowed to live just because he’s a person and he has that right. That Steve’s carelessness for his own life is ridiculous and unjustified. But how do you go about explaining to a person that his life isn’t measured in the good he can do for others?

Bucky sighs. It’s time to try another tactic.

“You could do a lot of good as Captain America, you ever thought about that?” He tilts his head sideways at Steve. “Inspire social change, run for president, make more of a difference than you could out here in the trenches.”

Steve snorts. “Me, president? That a joke?”

“Well, why not?” Bucky asks, hearing the desperation in his own voice.

“Buck.”

“Yeah?”

Steve catches his eyes again and takes a breath in that way he has that means something terribly sincere is sure to follow.

“You know I can’t stop taking risks, because that’s—that’s my job. But I promise to be more careful in the field, alright? I’ll take that gun you keep throwing at me, I’ll wait for backup when possible. I’ll do my best to stay alive.”

Just like Steve, Bucky knows when he’s being coddled. Unlike Steve, however, he’s smart enough to take what he’s being given.

Bucky lets out a long breath. “Alright.”

He can work on the rest of it later, Bucky promises himself. After the war. Because there will be a later, he just knows there is.


End file.
